@1ofthe45plus / @yestoscotland

30th December 2015

@1ofthe45plus/@yesttoscotland has been making tweets which imply violence by nationalists

Many people including journalists still take him seriously.

The @1ofthe45plus account was previously known as J McG Linklater with the Twitter handle @yestoscotland. The handle was changed shortly after the referendum, and then the original one was taken up by a spam account tweeting in Cyrillic characters which has since been suspended. However the tweets by the original @yestoscotland account can still be seen associated with the new handle.

@yestoscotland came to my attention when the Daily Mail printed a story about abuse of Sir Chris Hoy by nationalists, which included Linklater tweeting the 'Hoy is a bigoted anti-Scot'.

David didn't realise this was from a parody, nor did Stephen Daisley or Alex Massie who both retweeted it or referred to it. David quoted it in a response, and this was retweeted by some prominent political users including Adam Tomkins, Maggie Vaughan and Peter Geohegan.

Quite a number of genuine supporters of independence also (sadly) follow the account.

Please folk, ignore this troll. At best it's just someone who likes a good wind-up, at worst it's someone intentionally masquerading as the worst type of cybernat to sabotage the independence referendum and now the SNP.

I've not said this before, but the implication of violence against a journalist in this tweet is taking things too far. I believe I have the IP address used by @yestoscotland in the run-up to the referendum, along with information about the device he was using. I won't publish it, but if a journalist believes they could use it to unmask the troll I'd be prepared to pass it on. Contact me on garve@scott-lodge.com or @g4rve .

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